5 Slain In Another N.y. Store Shooting

Bronx Bloodbath Stuns City Anew

NEW YORK — For the second time in less than two weeks, a lone gunman opened fire in a small neighborhood store here Tuesday, massacring those inside and leaving New Yorkers reeling at the scope and brutality of the carnage.

Before he was wounded in a lunchtime shootout with police, a 22-year-old gunman killed five people Tuesday and critically injured three others in a Bronx shoe store bustling with Christmas shoppers.

Police said Michael Vernon unleashed the gunfire after apparently becoming "displeased with the service." Among the dead were a 12-year-old boy and the 41-year-old wife of the store's owner. She was celebrating her second wedding anniversary Tuesday.

The city barely had recovered from the Dec. 8 slaughter of seven people in a Harlem clothing store. In that case, a gunman-arsonist also wounded four others before setting the shop afire and killing himself.

Police believe that attack by a black gunman was racially motivated. In preceding weeks, the store had been the site of demonstrations protesting plans of the owner, a white Jewish man, to evict the black tenants of an adjacent record shop.

Arriving at Bronx Municipal Hospital late Tuesday to comfort the families of the wounded, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said, "We are asking for God's mercy."

"This is a terrible tragedy," he said. "The carnage in there was a horrible, horrible thing."

Ironically, Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton had taken pride last week in news that the city's 1995 reported crime rates for burglary, robbery and murder are expected to be the lowest in nearly 30 years.

Police are still unsure of why Vernon began shooting at the clerks and customers in Little Chester Shoes, but they have not ruled out robbery as a motive. They do know, however, that the incident was unrelated to the attack on the Harlem clothing store, said Charles Kammerenden, deputy chief of Bronx detectives.

What the two gruesome events did have in common was that both were bloodbaths, apparently committed by men who believed themselves wronged. Police said Vernon walked into the shoe shop on a busy commercial strip shortly before noon. He was looking for a pair of sneakers he had ordered, but something went wrong.

Vernon got into an argument with a clerk, then pulled out a gun and shot him, police said. He then turned his gun on the other people in the shop. He shot eight of them, most of them in the head, according to police and hospital officials.

When the gunfire erupted, a woman in the store ran out and flagged down a passing police car. The officer pulled out a shotgun and crouched behind a parked auto just as Vernon emerged from the store with another man, possibly a hostage.

Spotting the officer, Vernon opened fire. The police officer returned the fire, hitting Vernon at least once. Wounded, Vernon ran down the street before collapsing. He was taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds to the groin and the hand.

Kyong Bae, the wife of the shop owner, died of a gunshot wound to the head shortly after arriving at the hospital. Her husband, hospital officials said, got to her side 30 minutes before she died.

Earlier this month, the city was horrified when a racially charged real estate dispute turned a small Harlem clothing store into a bullet-ridden inferno. Seven people died of smoke inhalation and four others suffered gunshot wounds before the gunman shot himself to death.

Police said the gunman in that incident, Roland Smith, attacked Freddy's clothing store because its owner, Fred Harari, wanted to expand and planned to yank the lease of adjacent Record Shop, a black-owned business, to do it.

Police said Smith made statements during the incident that indicated he acted out of racial bias against the white store owner.